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Remi studied the gap, a chill skittering up her spine. This was definitely a perfect place for a trap, an ambush. The steep drop would have blocked her sister’s escape to the west. Thick trees and brush to the east would make it difficult to get very far before being caught. If someone was behind her, she’d have to shove past them to run up or down the trail.
What happened to you, Becca?
Scuffling noises sounded behind her.
She whirled around, yanking her gun out of her pocket and bringing it up in one swift motion.
Chapter Two (#uc1159ce7-9924-5646-b7b1-7f0147169007)
A hulking, dark-haired man dressed in green camouflage stared at her from twenty feet away, his face a mask of menace and hatred. He suddenly shoved his hand into his pocket.
“Freeze!” she yelled.
Ignoring her order, he tugged at something dark and metallic in his pocket that seemed to be caught in the fabric. A gun!
“No!” another man’s voice yelled from off to her left somewhere.
Camo-guy yanked the gun free.
Remi squeezed the trigger. Bam! Bam!
Camo-guy’s eyes widened in disbelief and he dropped like a rock. Remi jerked toward her left to face the next threat. A second man barreled into her, slamming them both to the ground, crushing her right shoulder. Agony knifed through her. She gritted her teeth and tried to push him away.
He rolled off her.
Fighting through the blinding pain, she flopped onto her back and tried to force her right arm to cooperate so she could point her gun at him. Except he wasn’t there. And she didn’t have her gun.
The sound of someone running had her turning her head to see her attacker drop to his knees beside the man she’d shot. He moaned and writhed on the ground, clutching his side.
She frantically looked around for her pistol. There, a few feet away. Her SIG was under a bush, where it must have landed when she was knocked down. Clutching her hurt arm against her chest, she scrambled forward on her knees. Awkwardly leaning in, she thrust her left hand beneath the branches, fingers scrabbling against the dirt.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” a deep voice snarled behind her. Her attacker was back.
She dived for the gun.
He grabbed her right ankle and yanked backward.
She cried out in frustration and kicked her legs. One of them slammed against his thigh. It was like hitting a solid rock. The impact had her clenching her teeth.
He swore. Maybe she’d managed to hurt him, too.
She kicked again, this time knocking his hand off her ankle.
She lunged forward, desperately reaching for her SIG Sauer.
Strong fingers clamped around both her calves like vice grips. He jerked her backward, so hard and fast that her jacket and shirt bunched up beneath her. Dirt and rocks scraped her belly, tracing a fiery burn across her skin.
Twisting around, she brought up her knee toward his groin as she swung a left hook at him.
He dived sideways, avoiding her knee, but not her fist. The blow caught him hard on his temple, making him grunt. But it didn’t slow him down. He threw himself on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
She bucked her hips, trying to throw him off while she struggled to coil her left hand into a fist for round two. Good grief, he was strong, a powerhouse of muscles that made her Pilates workouts seem like a pathetic waste of time. She could probably outrun him. Running was one of the few things where she excelled. But she had to get him off her first. She drew back her fist again.
He flipped her onto her stomach.
Hot lava boiled across the nerve endings in her battered shoulder. Bile rose in her throat. She could feel him fumbling for something, his hips moving alarmingly against her bottom as he turned to the side. Was he going to rape her?
“Let me go.” She struggled harder, pushing through the pain.
He reared up and jerked her arms back. Agony seared her shoulder. She cried out. Dark spots swam in her vision.
The feel of cold steel against her wrists had her stiffening. He was trying to handcuff her! She twisted and snaked against the ground, desperately trying to keep him from getting the cuffs into position. Her shoulder felt as if it was being shredded with a hot poker, but she couldn’t let up. If he got those cuffs fastened, she was as good as dead. Her vision clouded. She was close to passing out from the pain.
“Fight, Remi. You can do this!” Her sister’s voice echoed in her mind.
The ratcheting sound of the cuffs locking into place sounded behind her. He shoved his hands into her jacket pockets, took her cell phone. Then he ran his hands quickly up and down her body. She cursed at him and tried to arch away.
“Stay there. Don’t move.” The command from her captor sounded more like an angry growl than an order. His weight lifted off her and once again he was gone.
She collapsed against the ground, the fight draining out of her. There was nothing else she could do. She squeezed her eyes shut. I’m so sorry, Daddy. Please forgive me, Becca. A whimper clogged her throat. Becca. Her sometimes sweet, always impetuous, infuriating twin. Maybe it was fitting that they’d both die in the same place, together as always, cradle to grave.
Remi lay unmoving. What was her assailant doing now? Without him weighing her down and her struggling against him, the agony in her shoulder became bearable. The black fog dissipated and the fuzziness in her head evaporated.
A low murmur had her turning her head. The man who’d cuffed her was on his knees again beside his partner in crime, saying something to him. His neon orange backpack strained across his broad shoulders, the color contrasting sharply with his black pants and black shirt. The wounded man writhed on the ground, his teeth bared like a rabid animal caught in a trap.
“Idiot! Stop wasting time. Get up while he’s distracted. Run!”
Her sister’s voice was so loud inside Remi’s head that she half expected to see her forever-seventeen features twisted with fury.
I’m so sorry, Becca. It’s all my fault. Everything is my fault.
Pent-up grief swept through her like a tsunami, obliterating everything in its path. It drowned her in a sea of sorrow that was just as fresh now as when she was a teenager. Losing both her mother and her sister the same year had nearly destroyed her. The death of her father a little over a year later had destroyed her, or at least, the person she used to be. She’d had to remake herself into someone new just to survive. A harder, tougher Remi Jordan. Or so she’d thought. Yet here she lay, helpless, about to die. You’re right, Becca. I’m an idiot.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Remi. Get your lazy butt up and run! Now! You owe me!”
You owe me. Her sister was right. She had to at least try. Remi tried to jerk upright, then gasped at the white-hot pain that shot through her shoulder. She shuddered and braced her forehead against the cold ground, gulping in short breaths of arctic air.
“Get up!” Becca yelled again.
Remi drew a ragged breath and awkwardly wiggled her body. Without the use of her hands to push herself up, it took a ridiculous amount of time to make it to a sitting position. But at least with her hands cuffed behind her back, the pressure on her shoulder was making it go blessedly numb. Maybe she could do this, after all.
She braced herself to try to stand, and risked a quick glance at the two men. The one who’d cuffed her had his backpack on the ground beside him and had taken out a first aid kit. With one hand pressing gauze bandages against the injured man’s side, he sat back and reached his other hand toward his waist.
Remi stiffened, expecting him to pull out a gun, maybe even hers. Instead, he lifted the edge of his jacket to reveal a thick black belt.
A utility belt.
With various leather holders clipped to it, like the kind that held handcuffs.
And a two-way radio.
A horrible suspicion swept through her, freezing her in place.
He grabbed the radio and pressed one of the buttons on the side. As if he sensed her watching him, his gaze flew to hers. The radio crackled and he spoke into the transmitter.
“This is Special Agent Duncan McKenzie. I located the woman the witness at the shelter reported seeing with a gun. But not before she shot a hiker. I need a medical crew up here, ASAP.”
The blood drained from Remi’s face, leaving her cold and shaking. Her gaze flew to the man she’d shot. He was pale and still on the forest floor, his eyes closed. And beside him, hanging out of his pocket, was the gun he’d pulled on her.
Except it wasn’t a gun.
It was a cell phone.
Dear God. What had she done?
Chapter Three (#uc1159ce7-9924-5646-b7b1-7f0147169007)
Hunching in his jacket against the bitter wind, Duncan paused behind the unfamiliar SUV in the gravel lot by the office trailer. The vehicle’s plain exterior and dark color would typically help it blend in and avoid being noticed. Not here. Surrounded by white vehicles with green stripes down their sides and the brown National Park Service arrowhead shield on their doors, the SUV stuck out like a white-tailed deer in a herd of elk.
The license plate was federal government issue, but not the kind used by the NPS. All Duncan knew for sure was that whatever alphabet agency was here, they hadn’t simply dropped by on their way someplace else. Nestled deep inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, this satellite office was miles from the nearest town, Gatlinburg. The steep, winding access road was a challenge during the summer, nearly impossible during the winter without a four-wheel drive. Which meant their visitor was here on purpose. Something big must be going on, and Duncan aimed to find out what that was.
He jogged up the salted concrete steps at the end of the long trailer to the only door, a solid steel monstrosity designed to keep out the occasional curious black bear. The deep scratches in the prison-gray paint proved just how solid, and necessary, that precaution was. Even the huge metal storage shed at the end of the lot was reinforced with heavy steel bars. Working in the wilderness was dangerous in more ways than one. He pulled open the door and stepped inside.
Seventies-era dark wood paneling sucked up most of the light, in spite of wide windows set high up on the longest opposing walls. Four desks were tucked end to end beneath those windows, leaving a center aisle of worn rust-colored shag carpet. His boss, Yeong Lee, faced him from behind another, larger desk at the end of the aisle. Across from him, occupying the two metal folding chairs reserved for visitors, were a large black man in a charcoal-gray suit and a petite Caucasian woman with long blond hair cascading down her back.
As Duncan hung his jacket and gloves on hooks beside the door, he exchanged greetings with the only other people inside, Rangers Nick Grady and Oliver McAlister. Skinny freckle-faced Grady was a green-around-the-gills new recruit, while white-haired McAlister, with his gravelly smoker’s voice and stout frame, was a permanent fixture in the park. Dubbed Pup and Pops, the two were sitting together to the right of the door at McAlister’s desk. As usual, Pops was mentoring Grady about something on the computer screen.
Duncan paused beside McAlister. “Thanks for helping me out this morning. Did the prisoner give you any trouble?”
He shook his head. “No trouble at all and no thanks needed. If you hadn’t been here at 0-dark-thirty and taken the call for us, we’d have been the ones assigned to head up there, anyway. What’s the story on the hiker? Did he make it?”
“He got lucky. The bullet passed through the fleshy part of his side. Lost a lot of blood and they’ve got him on IV antibiotics to stave off infection. But he’s expected to make a full recovery.” He motioned toward the couple across from Lee. “Which agency decided to pay us a visit? Any idea why they’re here?”
McAlister exchanged a surprised look with Grady, his bushy eyebrows climbing like albino caterpillars to his hairline. “You don’t recognize the woman from this morning?”
Duncan frowned and studied her as best he could from across the room. The long blond hair did remind him of the shooter’s hair. But since McAlister had taken her into custody, that wasn’t possible. Was it? She lifted her left hand, motioning in the air as she spoke to Lee. She also gave Duncan his first clear view of a royal blue shirtsleeve and the cream-colored jacket folded over the arm of her chair. He sucked in a sharp breath, his hands fisting at his sides. It was her. The combination of blond hair, blue shirt and off-white jacket couldn’t be a coincidence.
If he’d been a second slower this morning, he’d either be sporting some seriously bruised ribs thanks to his Kevlar vest, or he’d have had his head blown off, depending on the aim of the woman sitting in that chair.
“Why isn’t she locked up?” Without waiting for McAlister’s reply, he strode up the aisle to Lee’s desk and turned to face the woman once again. Except, this time, she wasn’t pointing a gun at him.
The white sling cradling her right arm forestalled the angry words he’d been about to say. Instead, suspicion heavy in his tone, he demanded, “What happened to you?” She wouldn’t be the first suspect to fake an injury to delay being booked into jail.
Her dark brows rose. “You did.”
“Is that supposed to be funny? Because I find it incredibly offensive.”
She held her left hand in front of her in a placating gesture. “I’m just stating facts. When you slammed me to the ground, you dislocated my shoulder.” She shrugged, then winced and clasped her left hand over her right shoulder as if she was in pain.
He wasn’t buying her act. And he sure as certain wasn’t letting her version of events go unchallenged. “I think what you meant to say was that I tackled you to keep from being shot, after you’d just shot an unarmed man and then turned your pistol on me.”
A red flush crept up her neck. “I thought the hiker had a gun. And you attacked me. I was protecting myself.”
“The only one attacking anyone up there was you.” He tapped the lump on his temple where she’d punched him, which he knew already had a visible bruise.
Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t respond.
He waved toward the back right corner of the trailer. “Why isn’t she locked up in the holding cell? Or on her way to jail courtesy of Gatlinburg PD? She could have killed Kurt Vale.”
“Could have?” Her eyes widened. “Then...he’s alive?”
The hopeful tone of her voice sounded false to him. “The time for concern would have been before you pulled the trigger and shot an innocent man. But if you’re asking whether you managed to kill him, the answer is no. I just left him at the hospital after the doctor stitched him up.”
“I’m glad he’s okay.”
Ignoring her, he turned to his boss. “What’s going on here?”
Lee addressed the man silently observing them from the other side of the desk. “FBI Supervisory Special Agent Leon Johnson, meet Special Agent Duncan McKenzie, criminal investigator with the National Park Service.”
Johnson held his hand out without bothering to pry his generous frame out of the ridiculously small folding chair beneath him.
Duncan leaned across the desk and shook the agent’s hand, but his attention once again turned to the woman. Four hours ago she’d shot a hiker. Now she was parked beside an FBI agent. Why? Since he regularly studied the FBI’s ten most-wanted-fugitives list, he knew she wasn’t on it. But she must have done something pretty dang bad to warrant the FBI showing up, especially this soon after the shooting. So why wasn’t she handcuffed? Or in the cell while the agent spoke to his boss?
“I’m a little lost.” Duncan glanced back and forth between Lee and Johnson. “Since our shooting suspect is sitting beside an FBI agent, I assume there’s something else going on that involves her, besides what happened this morning. Can someone catch me up here?”
“What’s going on,” Johnson said, “is that your shooting suspect is one of our agents. She was off duty, supposed to be on vacation, not running around shooting people.”
Duncan stared at him in shock. The woman from this morning’s shooting was a Fed? A fellow law-enforcement officer? He hadn’t gotten to speak to her after the shooting. He didn’t even know her name. He’d been too busy trying to keep Kurt Vale from bleeding out. As soon as McAlister and Grady had arrived to take her into custody, he hadn’t given her another thought. Instead, he’d helped the medics get Vale down the mountain to the waiting ambulance.
“You’re FBI?” He couldn’t quite wrap his head around that.
She stood and held out her left hand, since her right one was in the sling. “Special Agent Remi Jordan.”
He eyed her hand like he would a poisonous snake.
She took the hint and sat back down.
Johnson laboriously rose to his feet and tugged his suit jacket into place. “Special Agent Jordan has waived her right to an attorney and has declined my offer to stay here with her. She has assured me that she’s prepared to fully cooperate with your investigation. Isn’t that right?”
She gave him a curt nod, but didn’t meet his gaze.
“I’ve already taken her badge,” Johnson said. “And your crime scene unit logged her gun as evidence. She’s now on administrative leave, pending the results of your investigation. If either of you gentlemen need anything further from my office, let me know.” He tapped a white business card sitting on the desk. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Knoxville.” He grabbed his coat from a peg behind Lee’s desk and then shrugged into it as he headed toward the door.
Duncan watched the man leave, distaste burning like acid in his throat. For the first time since the shooting earlier today, he felt a tug of sympathy for the woman sitting on the other side of the desk. No matter what she’d told Johnson, the man was her boss. It was his duty to look out for her. He should have insisted that she get a lawyer, or brought one with him. Lee sure would have. He’d fight like a rabid bobcat to defend every member of his team. Justice would be served, of course. But he’d do everything he could to ensure that his officers’ rights were protected.
Lee pushed back his chair and stood. “Special Agent Jordan, with you getting that shoulder patched up and your boss asking us to wait until he got here to talk, we haven’t had much of a chance to discuss the details of the shooting. Special Agent McKenzie will take your statement. In the meantime, my stomach is eating a hole through my spine. I’ll head down the mountain and get us all some lunch. Any dietary restrictions or preferences I should know about?”
Her expression turned wary as she obviously debated whether or not to trust him. From the way her own boss had just acted, Duncan couldn’t blame her.
